• Question: How heavy is a cloud?

    Asked by to Alan, Deepak, Francesca, Lilly, Nick on 18 Mar 2014. This question was also asked by .
    • Photo: Alan Fitzsimmons

      Alan Fitzsimmons answered on 18 Mar 2014:

      Wow, I don’t know, but I’m a scientist so I should be able to figure it out!

      A medium sized cloud is about 500 metres on a side. That means its volume is 500x500x500=125,000,000 cubic metres!

      The density of a cloud is almost the same as air , and the density of air is about 1.3 kg per cubic metre. So that’s the density of a cloud.

      The mass of a cloud is the volume multiplied by the density. So the mass is
      125,000,000 x 1.3 = 162,500,000kg.

      The weight of something is the mass x gravity, and gravity is about 10 Newtons/kg.

      So the weight of a cloud is about 162,500,000 x 10 = 1,625,000,000 Newtons. That’s a weight of over 1 billion Newtons!

      And that’s how we do science 🙂

    • Photo: Francesca Day

      Francesca Day answered on 18 Mar 2014:

      Alan beat me to it! That was a really fun calculation 🙂

    • Photo: Nick Wright

      Nick Wright answered on 21 Mar 2014:

      Good question. I think Alan’s answer looks about right. This is one of the things about being a scientist: if another scientist does a calculation they will always show you how they did it so that if you don’t believe them you can redo it and check their answer. Its important in science that everyone is open and honest about what they’ve done so that we can all learn from each other and trust each other. Only then can we all learn new things together!

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